The politics of monopoly and peace settlement in South Sudan

By Joseph Oduha, Nairobi, Kenya

Friday, July 24, 2020 (PW) — Most often, many people wonder why it is difficult for a tiny nation with less than 13 million population not to be at peace. Well, their curiosity is absolutely correct and justifiable in either way. 

In fact, both classical, suave and lately radical approaches were all used to bring about this last peace pact known as (Revitalized Peace Agreement) but it is still struggling to even hold the ground despite the little progress made by the signatories in Juba. 

The is the second peace in making and it is third time Dr Machar works with President Kiir but today we are not seeing any realistic programs for nation-building among the two principals because the implementation of the peace is still cloud with lot of suspicions from both sides. 

According to the pact, 2021 would be the end of the interim period and elections were supposed to commence immediately after that in early 2022. But from what is happening now, one would conclude that we may have elections in 2024-5 or the country may even slip back to war in between due to the violent politics practice by the warlords. 

Presently, instead of focusing on economic recovery, poverty and hunger eradication, improve health and education systems and mending of the broken social fabric among other basic needs, both President Salva Kiir and his deputy Riek Machar are besieged by implementation of the security arrangements, a key provision in the peace agreement. 

Promises have been made multiple times to the citizens and the stakeholders to the peace such as the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union (AU), but all these promises yielded little as time flies up. 

Imagine, institutions of the transitional government such as legislative assembly including those of states’ levels have not yet been established up to now.  

However, it is not a surprise at all as to why the peace settlement in South Sudan remains in between a hard place and stone.

There is always that elusive tendency from President Kiir associates who believed in delaying tactics to monopolize the political spectrum, something visibly happening now. 

This political calculation is very strange and could place the country back on a time bomb ready to explode at a time any of Kiir opponent like Dr Machar steps on.

We have seen wave of defections in Dr Machar faction just several weeks after the formation of the new transitional government in February this year. Most of the defectors joined President Kiir faction, a move that would politically handicapped SPLM-IO in the would-be upcoming election.  

So, the monopolization of politics by President Kiir faction is directly responsible for the stagnation in the peace implementation because most of President Kiir associates elusively believed that the setbacks would affect the opponent faction of Dr Machar and other opposition groups. But in reality any setbacks resulting from the peace pact under implementation will eventually affect all the signatories.

Explicitly, President Kiir is using this political monopoly strategy to defeat his political opponents and to comfortably keep griped on power. 

His confidence lies right on the militarization of politics. Indeed,in African context, once politics is militarized, monopolization of it becomes automatic through scare-rule leadership style that would swipe out fundamental freedoms and curtailed basic human rights. 

Sani Abacha of Nigeria, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and many other African leaders some of whom are still in power now have used the same theory of militarization of politics to effect monopoly of politics. 

However, I can attest that President Kiir and his associates got it completely wrong because they focused on defeating opponents through monopoly of politics but how they would convinced South Sudan common citizens’ is yet a homework that they mayfailed. 

For example, if one is to conduct a public opinion poll among South Sudan citizens on the fate of the two leaders (Kiir and Machar), the two may possibly grazed less than they expect. The frustrations among citizens are very high because of the magnitude of the destruction and suffering South Sudan citizens are undergoing both at home and refugee camps.

So, the desire for politics of monopoly is adversely affecting the settlement of political volatility in South Sudan and civilians are paying the price dearly. Just stop politics of monopoly because it’s sternly undermining the importance of consensus to stir up political will to move the nation forward to unity of purpose. 

A change of mindset and attitude especially for political leaders is greatly needed and it is paramount to achieving total peace in South Sudan. 

The author Mr. Joseph Oduha is a South Sudanese journalist. He can be reach by abunabet@gmail.com

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